FORENSIC ACCOUNTING ANALYSIS USING BENFORD’S LAW ON GST COLLECTIONS OF WEST BENGAL

As a new evolving profession Forensic Accounting has gained a lot of faith and belief in the eyes of court of law in the recent years to investigate, detect frauds, misstatements and malpractices. Forensic Accounting investigations are conducted by professionals and they use various techniques and methods to collect evidences for their investigations. One of such commonly used method is Benford’s Law analysis. The present study focusses on detection of irregularities, potential anomalies in GST collections from West Bengal using Benford’s Law and to assess the conformity of GST data (CGST, SGST, IGST, and CESS) to expected patterns or distributions. Dataset used comprises of GST collections of West Bengal state from July 2017 to June 2024. The results of the analysis indicated certain anomalies or deviation in case of CESS. The CGST data showed the highest level of conformity. It shows that data published by the government in the official GST website in certain months may be little under reported or over reported.